Puzzling Rush Review

A few things in this life are inevitable: death, taxes, and new iterations on the 'match-3' puzzle game. Predictable as the tides, this will always be a thing. Over the years the formula has seen a number of different tweaks and changes, but in the end the core gameplay is always the same: clear symbols off the board by shifting them around until sets of three or more are aligned. We should all be more than familiar with this concept.

Puzzling Rush, at first glance, seems to be rather similar to Infinite Interactive’s 2007 hit, Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords in its usage of a fantasy theme. But where Puzzle Quest provided innovation in adding a storyline and RPG-lite mechanics on top of the puzzle game framework, Puzzling Rush never quite makes it out of the gate.

Instead of actually explaining its mechanics, Puzzling Rush chooses to rely on a series of visual diagrams that hint vaguely at what happens when various game mechanics are enacted or powers activated. It’s a design choice that could have been elegantly simple, but instead falls short in its execution. It’s pretty easy to note that matching elemental symbols fills the gauge of whichever special power is linked to that energy type, but it will take a couple of playthroughs to figure out what each power actually does. And even then, they’re rarely more than variations on gaining a temporary gauge boost to attack/defense/vampirism (read: healing - it took me a while to actually notice the tiny boost in action) or perhaps causing a random tile on the board to switch types. Choices are present, but none of them feel terribly important or tactical in any way.

There are three different races to choose from, all of which differ only slightly. Elves have marginally higher damage while Orks get a tiny bit more health and defense. Humans straddle the line with evenly balanced stats. However, in practice the player is highly unlikely to notice much of a difference. Again, more choices that don’t really matter.

Popular games frequently have their formulas duplicated, spawning everything from brazenly shameless clones to impressively iterative offerings that far surpass their original inspiration. Underneath its simple, cartoony, yet weirdly endearing art aesthetic, Puzzling Rush has all of the pieces in place to actually go somewhere. Instead, it chooses to tread somewhat timidly over well-worn ground. What we get is a plodding series of battles that feel hollow and pointless, using powers that don’t really do much while playing races barely distinguishable from one another beyond their portrait art.

While I wasn’t really expecting Puzzling Rush to be a full-blown Puzzle Quest clone with a storyline, RPG mechanics, and the like, I was hoping to find at least a modicum of enjoyment. Instead, what I found was a rote, mechanical, and fairly joyless experience.